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> and it reconstructs how the program worked on that day. It reconstructs how the fully updated version of everything worked that day which isn't necessarily t
by st1x7 6y ago
> and it reconstructs how the program worked on that day.
It reconstructs how the fully updated version of everything worked that day which isn't necessarily the same as the researcher's environment. It's a horrible idea to use dates instead of package versions for this. The author's library doesn't solve the problem it claims to solve.
- SCLeo 6y agoIf I am understanding this correctly, the problem is that the paper authors do not provide a specific version or a package.json equivalent. In that case, using dates seem to be the only choice.
- st1x7 6y agoEven if that's the case, using dates isn't a solution because dates don't give you the build that the researcher used. Date of publication is different from the date when the code ran and there is no guarantee that the researcher ran the latest version of every dependency that was available to them anyway. In fact that's very unlikely considering that some their libraries might require older versions. It might not even be possible to take the latest version of every package and use them in the same environment.
- SCLeo 6y agoSo, what is your better alternative then? I honestly believe using version available at that date is better than using the latest version.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]